Google Social Search Launches – What Does This Mean For SEO?

Google will be releasing a new type of search, called Google Social Search, which will allow social content from websites like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Linkedin to be pulled into Google search results.  This is a response to Microsoft’s recent announcement of a deal with Twitter and Facebook that will allow updates to be found in Bing search results.  More and more users are engaging  and communicating through multiple social outlets including social networks, blogs, micro-blogging, and user generated content.

Google Social Search is the newest way for Google to keep up with social trends and improve the SEPRs by providing the most relevant results for a search query.

Watch a video from Matt Cutts who explains how Google Social Search works.

One of the biggest changes to Google Social Search, is the ability for Google to pull in results from your “social circle”.  Google defines your social circle as people you are connected to through social services such as Twitter and Friendfeed that you’ve listed in your Google profile.  Your social circle as consists of your contacts within your Gmail chat list and friends, family and coworkers in your contact groups for Google.

Watch the video that shows a demonstration of how Google Social Search works.

What Does This Mean for SEOs

Now that Google is starting to add more of a social element to their results, it will be important for SEOs to be that much more involved in these social sites.  Using Twitter to post new content, share information and connecting with people will now be a new tactic in gaining search engine traffic.

Recently SEOs have been using social media as a major contributor in their internet marketing strategies.  I would expect that SEOs will spend even more time building credibility, networking, promoting content, and communicating because of Google Social Search.

Google Social Search will be rolling out to everyone in the next few weeks, however you can opt-in to the new search within Google Labs.